<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>(you made me a you made me a) by Irrelevancy</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22696990">(you made me a you made me a)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Irrelevancy/pseuds/Irrelevancy'>Irrelevancy</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Organic Rituals [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>One Piece</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Corset Piercings, Dubious Consent, Families of Choice, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Light BDSM, M/M, Masochism, Moral Ambiguity, Multi, No Smut, Piercings, Post-Marineford, Skinning, Suicidal Thoughts, Violence, Wano Arc (One Piece), but plenty of on-brand erotic violence, shanks is a whole aftermath unto himself, this is really just an extended meditation on how much is dubious and how much is consent, vista comes to save marco and gets to deal with shanks</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 03:14:15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,753</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22696990</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Irrelevancy/pseuds/Irrelevancy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>“Marco?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>All the response there was to Vista’s terrified, disbelieving call: a parting of pale, parched lips. Vista turned his tense attention to Shanks, who was just staring at him steadily.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“What’s wrong? Why isn’t he healing?”</em>
</p><p>Or; the family comes knocking. Shanks/Marco/Benn</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Akagami no Shanks | Red-Haired Shanks &amp; Benn Beckmann, Akagami no Shanks | Red-Haired Shanks/Fushichou Marco | Phoenix Marco, Akagami no Shanks | Red-Haired Shanks/Fushichou Marco | Phoenix Marco/Benn Beckmann</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Organic Rituals [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1632484</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>44</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>(you made me a you made me a)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>you know how you plan to write a million things and then the one thing that gets written is the thing that you never planned to write and never needed to be written</p><p>but we love Vista right? so here's our boy. Title's from Imagine Dragon's "Believer"</p><p>CONTENT WARNING: discussion of dubious consent and arguments about self-harm/suicidal intent. More details in end notes.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“You can come out.”</p><p>This was the scene Vista stepped determinedly into, serrated epiphyllum edges trying to halt his progress like a warning: Red Hair (Yonko, brat, strong motherfucker, <em>Shanks</em>) sitting without his crew in the middle of the tropical clearing, sword propped casually against a tree an arm’s reach away, and Marco, outlined in Shanks’ cape, lying in his lap.</p><p>Marco. First Mate, brat, strong motherfucker. Brother. Unresponsive to Vista’s sudden presence no matter how hard Vista stared at that strip of wet white cloth draped over his eyes and tightly furrowed brow.</p><p>His chest was caked in the same cloth, thought no longer white; bloody splotches seeped through the entire expanse of where Vista knew Pop’s mark was tattooed. The earth around him, Vista could tell by the tracks of red running down his ribs, was thoroughly fertilized with iron.</p><p>“Marco?”</p><p>All the response there was to Vista’s terrified, disbelieving call: a parting of pale, parched lips. Vista turned his tense attention to Shanks, who was just staring at him steadily.</p><p>“What’s wrong? Why isn’t he healing?”</p><p>“Because I’ve put a shard of seastone under his tongue,” Shanks replied, as unbothered as the march of ants in single file down the side of the tree he leaned against. Each little mandible carried a piece of leaf from the canopy above, while even smaller guard ants perched on the leaves to ward off predators. The forest, teeming with life, was hard at work around them, partaking in every variation on death and decay.</p><p>Vista’s swords came partially unsheathed. This was a Yonko before him, but no fear of inadequacy could even dream of coagulating between a sworn son of Whitebeard and someone who’s injured a brother, no matter how paramount his power.</p><p>(But trauma, borne of other powers <em>too</em> paramount to topple, just might tremor his grip.)</p><p>Vista was not an impolite man; he offered second chances.</p><p>“And why have you done that?”</p><p>“‘Cause I had to make him bleed.”</p><p>Vista’s swords should’ve severed Shanks’ neck. Instead, they were blocked by the barrel of a shotgun with a loud yet dull <em>clan</em><em>k</em><em>!</em> Vista had little attention to spare, now that he was dealing with both Shanks <em>and</em> Benn Beckman, but he still caught a glimpse of Marco’s grimace, an aborted spasm of the body, before Beckman stepped fully in between Vista and Shanks.</p><p>“Relax,” Beckman suggested, a pail of water slung casually over a shoulder with his free hand as he stared Vista down. Shanks made a little noise of attention at this behind Beckman and began shuffling about. The water was passed off and drank from. “Marco agreed to this.”</p><p>“Agreed,” Vista said through gritted teeth, swords rattling against Beckman’s block, “to <em>what</em>, exactly?”</p><p>He heard the sound of Shanks’ laugh, happy and brilliant as always. Marco had told Vista once how much it pissed him off but Vista had just waved it away as an inconsequential gripe. And now Marco was in their hands covered in blood—</p><p>“He asked for it, really,” Shanks said, and Beckman smirked, the corner of his mouth twitching up like the strike of a match and hiss of smoke.</p><p>Vista scraped his swords back and struck again. Flower Sword, brother, <em>strong motherfucker</em>. Benn Beckman was an excellent weapons fighter but he had a blunt gun with empty chambers and Vista had two pointy things he also knew how to wield with deadly accuracy. Beckman kept to the defense, because he knew that any opening in an offense would give Vista the opportunity to disengage. To clear Beckman’s range of attack and go for Marco instead.</p><p>But that meant Vista got to keep the offense. Like the epiphytic cacti dripping from the understory around them, his swordplay was all sharp and pointed spikes that Beckman deflected and brushed aside. Crawl far enough up a cactus though, and you come across a bud. Packed and pink, it would burst open in bloom, Vista knew, for a single evening.</p><p>For his brother, Vista could bring night down on Benn Beckman. And he did—aimed for the left arm, thought he’d do Beckman a favor and make him a match with his captain.</p><p>But just before Vista could land the blow, there was a flash of a familiar silhouette and—</p><p>He had to stop the bite of his sword before—</p><p>“<em>Marco</em>.” That was a tone Vista hasn’t used since he was seventeen and Marco fifteen, when puberty seemed to make a world of difference between what Vista called <em>maturity</em> and Marco called <em>y</em><em>ou’re a dick</em>. They’d gotten along quite well after that momentary dissonance, only a thimble’s worth of time in the grand march of things. But here, the familiar snappish chastisement was back, summoned forth perhaps by the wave of concern<em>panic!</em>doubt that plagued him both now and in his teenage years.</p><p>Why would Marco get between Vista’s swords and Benn Beckman?</p><p>“Vista, hang on,” Marco whispered in fevered breaths. The cloth blindfolding him and either fallen or been taken off, and Vista could now see the unfocused pupils, the bloodshot sclera. Marco was swaying on his feet, Shanks’ cape hanging from his shoulders like a pall, or a great big hand of shadows dragging at him toward the ground.</p><p>Perhaps understanding what Marco had just done for him, Benn Beckman put one hand on Marco’s shoulder in a friendly pat. He quickly snatched it back when one of Vista’s swords went rending through the cloth of Shanks’ cape.</p><p>“Don’t <em>touch</em> him.”</p><p>“I did,” Marco continued, unheeding of Beckman’s touch and Vista’s snarled response. “I agreed to this. I asked for this—”</p><p>“Is it for this foolish <em>debt</em>,” Vista spat, swords rattling against his sides as he shook with <em>fury</em>. “Don’t you think you’ve paid it a hundred times over now? I’ve heard the stories of what<em> they’ve</em> done to you. We all have.”</p><p><em>I don’t know who else came running but I’m just the lucky bastard who found you first</em>.</p><p>Marco paled, somehow, further. Before he could say anything though, the cloth at his chest peeled off in corroboration with Vista, as if Pops himself was pointing out the goods and services already rendered here.</p><p>Bare and mangled muscle. Marco’s chest glistened red, fresh blood seeping with every breath. He just stood there and breathed for a while, as the mass of cloth dropped wetly to the rainforest ground.</p><p>“You’ve done enough, Marco.” His voice came out guttural and pleading, but Vista was bargaining for his brother’s <em>life</em>—shame didn’t even enter the picture when it came to groveling. He resolutely swallowed back a scream at the sight of Marco’s lost tattoo. “Let me take you back.”</p><p>Marco finally met his eyes for the first time that day. His gaze was both wayward and incredulous—Vista flinched, swords falling to the defensive.</p><p><em>Back?</em> Marco’s eyes clearly telegraphed. <em>Back where?</em></p><p>“Marco—!”</p><p>He sheathed his swords so he could grab Marco by the shoulders. Immediately though, Vista felt the odd alignment of Marco’s arms underneath the cape, and realized he hadn’t seen Marco’s hands once during this entire exchange, no pale flesh flashing from amidst black cloth. Heart thudding in terrible omen, Vista pawed at the cape, white satin slipping against its coarse linen, until he could fling the damn thing off and see his brother’s entire bare torso underneath. Marco’s pallor continued, and with no resistance Vista turned Marco around by the shoulder to see—</p><p>Red threads, criss-crossing. It was lacing, Vista thought numbly, but it wasn’t immediately obvious what the fibrous tension was pulling taut, until a smattering of parakeets hid then released the sun, drawing Vista’s attention to the glinting spots of metal lining Marco’s upper arms—</p><p>There were small metal hoops—more than five on each arm at a glance but less than ten perhaps—but what the hell did count matter when all that gray steel was <em>mutilated</em> into his brother’s <em>skin</em>—</p><p>It became clear, so clear to Vista now, what the relationship was between Shanks, his First Mate, and Marco: constraint, confinement, incarceration. <em>Property</em>, clearly labeled in dripping red and distending metal. Vista’s hands once again flew to his swords, keen on cutting Marco free but for the first time in their entire exchange Benn Beckman went on the offensive, knocking at Vista’s hand, the hilt of Vista’s sword in warning with his shotgun.</p><p>“Don’t damage my captain’s property,” Beckman said.</p><p>Vista saw red.</p><p>It occurred to him, seconds into the fight, that Beckman probably meant the threads. But clearly Beckman wanted to play provocateur, and did it well—swords and shotgun went flying around the clearing, bringing down foliage as they circled. Beckman never gave Vista the same opening as before, when Vista got a blade in on his arm, again. Some ways away, Vista could hear Marco speaking, frantic and biting and <em>helpless</em> and this was his brother dammit, who cared about the minuscule odds, he <em>had</em> to get Marco out of here—</p><p>It was Shanks’ sword that finally stopped his. Vista caught Shanks’ eyes, and felt all the breath punch out of him. The sheer <em>density</em> of intensity there—</p><p>Marco threw himself at Beckman’s chest and knocked Beckman for a few steps, outrage on his face.</p><p>“—be such a <em>dick</em>—”</p><p>Then, with Vista two seconds away from fully believing that this was where he’d die by Shanks’ hands, Marco bodychecked Shanks from the back too.</p><p>“—stop <em>messing around</em> for just a goddamn <em>second</em>,” Marco hissed as Shanks stumbled away laughing. As if he didn’t have Vista’s cessation at hand just moments ago. “Vista, no. There was a— I had an infection, something the phoenix wasn’t immune to. They were helping me. Bleeding it out was the fastest way to drain out the bad stuff.”</p><p>The aggressive motions and the short explanation proved enough exertion to send Marco stumbling. Before Vista could do it though, Shanks caught him, right Marco against his chest with one strong arm.</p><p>Eyed Vista over Marco’s shoulder in clear amusement.</p><p><em>Bullshit</em>, Vista wanted to say, but there was no point in accusing Marco now. Marco could be lying or not, Marco could’ve been lied <em>to</em> or not. Instead Vista asked stiffly, “then what about the rings?”</p><p>“I.” Marco’s eyes glazed over, this time not in feverish pain but in chagrin. “They’re only temporary.”</p><p>“Had to distract him from the pain of bleeding,” Shanks pointed out, as if hooking metal rings into Marco’s flesh and then <em>lacing them together</em> was at all a sensible sort of distraction. “We had Benn do them while I—”</p><p>“—<em>skinned his chest?</em>”</p><p>“Well. Yeah.”</p><p>“…It’ll grow back.” Marco’s voice had nearly disappeared into a humiliated whisper, and Vista had to watch Shanks’ hand pet his collarbone in comfort. “Vista, I. I’m <em>fine</em>.”</p><p>“<em>I’ll come off, it’ll grow back, I’ll heal</em>,” Vista said in trembling fury. “You don’t think I’ve heard all that a million times? Don’t you think that’s <em>exactly</em> how we know you’re not fine?!”</p><p>“Then where,” Shanks drawled, “do you get off thinking he’s being treated worse on my ship than on yours—”</p><p>With a twist of his torso, Marco whipped Shanks’ hand off and shot a glare over his shoulder. And Shanks’ expression… Well Vista wouldn’t give him the credit of looking properly chastised, more like he had tested some grounds he knew were dangerous, and now he was looking at the plume of smoke after a blown landmine from a tactically beaten distance. So satisfied, so controlled.</p><p>Marco’s turned back, some complicated emotion on his face.</p><p>“Vista.” The insistence on naming—textbook bedside manners, as if Marco was somehow still the doctor and Vista his patient, in need of calming lest he tipped into hysteria. “I don’t need rescuing.”</p><p>“Maybe not,” Vista said in the same tone as he might’ve spat, <em>you lying bastard</em>. “But Izo and his people might. Strawhat Luffy might. Remember your promise to him?”</p><p>That was mean. Marco’s lips went white, but hell, Vista thought sneeringly, tearfully, if Marco could forgive Shanks’ <em>butchery</em>, what’s a pinprick remark between family?</p><p>“What do they need?”</p><p>“Marco the Phoenix.”</p><p>That was meaner. An expert in bladeplay, Vista knew a laceration when he delivered it—not in the words but in the tone. <em>You see him anywhere?</em> a more spiteful sibling might’ve added. Vista wasn’t spiteful; Vista was <em>livid.</em></p><p>But the answering flick of vicious life in Marco’s glare went a long way in mollifying that. It was like watching a fern unfurl in the high-speed jungle around them, the way Marco <em>became</em> again. No more pseudo-corpse swaddled helplessly in Red Hair’s cloak, no more teetering unfocus—as if saying his moniker has summoned him back.</p><p>Shanks, behind him, lightly frowned.</p><p>“I’ll go,” Marco said, his throatiness of solemn determination. Vista felt first uncomplicatedly victorious, but then felt that victory dashed when Marco looked back at Shanks again.</p><p>As if looking for permission.</p><p>Beckman struck a match for the cigarette popped imperiously up at the corner of his mouth, and cocked his head when his captain got out a dagger. Shanks moved before Vista even had the time to grow nervous.</p><p>The sound of Marco’s sharp inhale, verging on a shout, filled the clearing. Several creatures rustled away screaming from the dangling vines above. Marco’s arms fell free to his sides, threads and blood both trailing red like mangled feathers behind him.</p><p>“It’s not our time to see Luffy yet,” Shanks commented wryly, fondly to his First Mate.</p><p>Benn Beckman stepped forward and, gripping and tilting Marco’s chin up in one hand, reached past Marco’s teeth with his other. His cigarette was pinched between the knuckles of the fingers in Marco’s mouth, cherry end carelessly scraping against Marco’s cheek.</p><p>Vista saw the moment Beckman plucked the seastone shard from under Marco’s tongue. Like some magician’s flourish, Beckman’s fingers came out and flipped, so the shard was held clear between fingertips and Marco could close his lips around the wet end of the cigarette.</p><p>Marco inhaled just as blue flames scored his cheek.</p><p>The blue, so comfortingly familiar to Vista, billowed down his chest and arms as well, and one by one with soft little pops, the rings were pushed out of his skin and fell to the ground. The severed red threads went with them, all except one, which Shanks kept hold of between his own fingers.</p><p>“Hey,” Red Hair said, unerringly summoning Marco’s attention again. “Come back after.”</p><p>The thread, one last ring dangling from the end of it, was tucked into Marco’s belt loop under his sash. Vista almost threw his sword, so Marco<em> wouldn’t</em> blow his lungful of smoke teasingly at Shanks, <em>wouldn’t</em> reach down to tighten the thread into a knot, <em>wouldn’t</em> give Benn Beckman’s chest an absent-minded pat.</p><p>Wouldn’t promise Red Hair Shanks, “I will, yoi.”</p><p>Vista didn’t like feeling uneasy about his own righteousness. Marco had been perfectly correct on all accounts—the rings came off, the tattoo came back, and the man himself seemed genuinely no worse for the wear. The fever (<em>if it ever existed</em>, Vista couldn’t stop himself from thinking) had completely gone.</p><p>It unnerved Vista so much that he had to stop Marco before they got clear of the jungle; he had to pat down Marco once more, in a futile facsimile of the gesture he really wanted to do, which was rip back open and strip back down all the places Red Hair and Beckman had wounded his brother and figure out what the <em>hell</em> they had done to Marco. It was ironic, that Vista had hated Marco wounded but now that Marco was all healed up but Vista’s hands still tingled with the aftershocks of blocking Benn Beckman’s blows, all Vista wanted was to see Marco vulnerable again. Cracked at the eyes, frayed at the muscles again, just so he could be sure that it really was a <em>person</em> under that skin and not an empty puppet dancing on red strings—</p><p>And Marco looked so <em>guiltily </em>at Vista, like he knew exactly what Vista was doubting.</p><p>Vista gritted his teeth, and pulled Marco into a crushing hug.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” he whispered fiercely. “I should’ve been here for you, we should never have let you go with him. Marco. <em>Marco</em>. You have to understand, they’re <em>hurting</em> you.”</p><p>“What else,” Marco mumbled in reply into Vista’s shoulder, “is there?”</p><p>Held harder. Gripped stronger so he wouldn’t shake apart, snap, and crash with the determinability of a felled tree.</p><p>“I got you now,” Vista vowed. “You may not see it but I’ll take care of you—”</p><p>Hands on his chest pushed Vista free—no, pushed <em>Marco </em>free of Vista. The ring, still stained with Marco’s blood, tumbled between both their thighs.</p><p>“Vista, no. <em>You</em> have to understand.”</p><p>As good as Marco had been at communication and negotiation as an adult, those were skills hard-earned. This Marco now, brows furrowed in frustrations and lips parted but mouth empty of words, was the Marco of their teenage years, struggling to tell Pops exactly <em>why</em> he had been moved to careless violence on an island of civilians.</p><p>And no matter how much Vista was scared to, he shut up and waited for Marco to find the words.</p><p>Marco’s eyes closed with an expression that conveyed how much he wanted the world—the noisy world with the screeching primates and ribbiting frogs—to stop intruding on his senses. Vista was abruptly reminded of the white cloth blindfold, the way Marco lied still in Shanks’ lap.</p><p>“After.” Yes, after; Vista understood. “Did you ever feel… unreal?”</p><p>Some of them still hated to talk about it; Vista was not one of that some.</p><p>“Yes,” he answered in the tone of prey. History was the predator, and could not be slain. “We spent more than twenty years with Pops after all. I hardly knew what to do with myself outside that.”</p><p>“He understood.” <em>He</em>, Vista stiffened to realize, referred to Shanks in Marco’s fervent voice. “He understood that I was… disappearing. So he gave me a tether to hold onto. Benn, he helped.”</p><p>This wasn’t the time or place, but Vista couldn’t swallow down the protest.</p><p>“You’re the one who talked me through this, after my Angelo died.” The accusatory tone got Marco’s full attention, pupils flooding with empathy. Good. Vista wouldn’t pull out the Angelo card for nothing. “You’re the one who helped me see the path of self-destruction I was headed down, that running rampant like that was self-harm—”</p><p>“<em>Vista, please</em>.” Vista’s teeth clacked painfully shut together again. There was no way he could talk over Marco’s plaintive, despairing plea. “Nothing else <em>works</em> for me. Do you— I <em>can’t</em>— I go out there, and <em>everything</em> I can possibly do feels unmoored from reality. No act of kindness, no dashing deed of heroism, no <em>healing</em> feels real, with Pops dead and everybody gone. I get shot at and it doesn’t last. It’s not <em>true</em>. And really, <em>really</em> Vista, I don’t want to die—if I did I’d’ve done it already, you know that.”</p><p>Marco gestured outward with a sweeping arm, and <em>yes</em>, Vista knew that. The sea was pale today and made sunlight look chilled.</p><p>Tears had crested the corners of Marco’s eyes now and his little brother looked so <em>agonized</em>—but, Vista understood with climbing dread, as if it was <em>Vista</em> that caused him the distress. Not Red Hair, not Benn Beckman, but Vista, who had thought himself a hero.</p><p>Vista’s hands flinched off of Marco’s arms, like overripe fruit dropping from a branch.</p><p>“They’re the only ones,” Marco was still trying to explain, and Vista was trying to understand, he truly was, “who could make the hurt <em>matter</em> again. They made it worth coming back from, yoi.”</p><p>“They gave you,” Vista muttered, “a place to come back to.”</p><p><em>But that too</em>, Vista wanted to howl, <em>was orchestrated by Red Hair. You were headed for Pop’s homeland. He made you go to him instead</em>.</p><p>But the enduring thesis of Marco’s stare was, <em>so what? A place is a place</em>.</p><p>Why hadn’t Vista brought Marco with him?</p><p>Grief made sufferers of them all, was the long and short of it. Driven to be alone, Vista had invited along nobody in his path of dispersal. And could he truly say that had he invited Marco along, Marco would now be better off? Sure, Marco wouldn’t have suffered a seastone-bound skinning (and all manners of other horrors Vista’s only heard dreadful rumors of), but according to Marco, that wouldn’t have been necessarily better.</p><p>Perhaps in that version of things, instead of being housed by a jungle Marco would’ve already walked into the sea. It was certainty the children of Whitebeard sought, after all, after their father’s death. What was more certain than the ocean’s unerring doom?</p><p>Red Hair Shanks, apparently. The man who moved the world, lost one arm, then moved it again for kicks. Shanks and his left-hand man, the shotgun that wielded itself.</p><p>“I,” Vista made himself say out loud, “have always trusted you with everything except matters of your own well-being. And you trusted us in return to take care of you. Does that not feel <em>real</em> anymore either?”</p><p>The guilt that crumpled Marco’s face this time was less the martyr, more the little brother who knew he’s done wrong. Vista felt the tension of one vertebra release in his spine.</p><p>“We’ll go,” Marco decided, hushed voice belying his usual tone as Commander, as de facto Captain. “We’ll help Izo, help Ace’s brother, and after everything’s resolved, I—”</p><p>He took a deep, shuddering breath.</p><p>“I’ll decide again then.”</p><p>Vista didn’t bring up the pendant, the token, the memento from Red Hair still drumming against Marco’s leg with the sea wind. What Marco said was practical. If Vista wanted to convince Marco to never go back under Shanks’ knife and Beckman’s gun, he was better off demonstrating, during this trip to Wano, everything Marco could still live for.</p><p>Build up a home for Marco, and hope it compared against what Shanks had to offer.</p><p>All Vista could do for now though was move along, march as sure as ants. Something was rotten, Vista knew that much. But was it the sour scent of a nest-destroying infection or merely the natural return of biology to strata?</p><p>Back on the tree, a bad wind billowed and a segment of leaf tumbled from an ant’s mandibles. Unbothered, the ant turns around, followed by its guard, and marches right back up the trunk to harvest another.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>CW: Marco and Thatch debate the nature of self-harm. Thatch argues Marco's behavior is self-destructive and edging toward suicide. Marco specifically refutes the accusation of suicidal intent, and frames the ways that Shanks and Benn have hurt him as coping mechanisms and ways to process grief that he's consented to. Vista does not agree.</p><p>I read Yuval Noah Harari's <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38820046-21-lessons-for-the-21st-century">21 Lessons for the 21st Century</a> and it fucking blew my mind okay? 1000% recommended. It took me where I needed to go with this re: why suffering.</p><p>As always, I keep trying for symbolism. Am I succeeding tho.</p><p>My <a href="https://touchmycoat.tumblr.com/">tumblr</a> and my <a href="https://irrelevancy-y.tumblr.com/">writing blog</a>. Leave a comment!!!</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>